Wednesday, January 04, 2006

I am slooooowly working through it (as you can see by the fact that I did a new sketch, something that would have been nigh impossible a few days ago) with journaling, doodling, and a walk every morning. But darnit, I need a kick in the butt to get me moving.

Jill and I talked last night about ways you can be blocked - how sometimes it takes the form of overplanning ("I can't start this painting without getting new supplies and pricing out frames and seeing what other artists are doing...") or, we identified for me, pressure to perform: the kids are in bed, here's your only time of the day to paint, GO! Be fantastically creative! "The problem," I said to Jill, "Is that that pressure has always worked well for me before." Hmmmmm.

I had a week off for the holidays, and planned to paint every night, redesign my whole site, go for long walks... and instead every afternoon I had to take a nap, and every night I fell into bed at 8 because I was so exhausted. My body hijacked me! So once I was caught up on sleep (um, around Jan. 2) I was staring at blank paper, actually arguing with myself because I was afraid to put anything down on the paper because I might mess it up. Phooey.

So here's where you come in, if you're still reading this far: please, for goodness' sake, give me a kick in the pants to get me going. If you have a tip for getting through a block, please share it. The only way I know how to do it is to paint and give myself permission to throw it in the fireplace if it stinks.

Any words of wisdom?

UPDATE: I have been a creating fool... this weekend I cooked and baked up a storm, and am working on three pictures at the same time. It's working! I'm working! Will post pics soon.